Bagnaia eyes three-peat but Marquez aims to spoil party

Ducati's Francesco Bagnaia goes into the 2024 season as the clear MotoGP championship favourite seeking to become the first rider since Marc Marquez to win three titles in a row but the man he looks to emulate may himself be a dark horse this time.

Italian Bagnaia won the 2022 title the hard way when he overturned a 91-point deficit to end Ducati's 15-year drought, while last year he had Jorge Martin to contend with as the Pramac Racing rider pushed him all the way to the final weekend.

But Ducati are not resting on their laurels and pre-season testing in Qatar showed their GP 24 bike will be the one to beat as Bagnaia obliterated the lap record set last year by his team mate Enea Bastianini, who was second-fastest in the test.

"I anticipated we'd be hovering around the low one minute 51 seconds mark, but going below that was beyond my expectations," said Bagnaia, the only rider to set a time inside 1:51.

"We've fine-tuned our package in every aspect. The GP24 showed promise right from the Valencia test... We're well-prepared for the upcoming season opener."

MARQUEZ SWITCH

Six-times MotoGP champion Marquez joined Gresini Racing after ending an 11-year association with Honda a year early when the Japanese outfit failed to catch up with Ducati's bikes, the dominant force in MotoGP over the last two seasons.

Marquez won his last title in 2019 but his career nosedived soon after, with an injury in the season-opening race of 2020 ruling him out for the rest of the year.

Having secured an incredible 18 podiums in his final title-winning season, he has finished in the top three only six times since then.

Marquez has also crashed several times in recent seasons while attempting to ride Honda's bike beyond its limits while his arm has